A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

Search form

DSK and the Pernicious ‘Perp Walk’

My column at the Washington Examiner (and Reason.com) this week uses the collapse of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case to argue against the “perp walk,” which has become a form of pretrial punishment and a way for spotlight-hungry prosecutors to grab attention—whether the ‘perp’ turns out to be guilty or not:

Back in May, when New York law enforcement paraded DSK before the cameras, hands cuffed behind his back, the French were outraged. “Incredibly brutal, violent and cruel,” France’s former justice minister gasped.

Irritating as it might be to admit it, the French have a point. The “perp walk”—in which suspects are ritually displayed to the media, trussed up like a hunter’s kill—has become common practice among prosecutors. But it’s a practice any country devoted to the rule of law should reject.

Of course, DSK isn’t the most sympathetic victim of the perp walk ever, nor, given paramilitary policing and “no knock” raids, is the perp walk the most abusive police/prosecutorial practice out there. But it’s at best a pointless indignity, and at worst a threat to due process—which is why it should be reined in. For Cato work on police tactics and misconduct, go here; and also see Reason’s recent “criminal justice” issue.